GREENVALE SANATORIUM Water Supply Almost Exhausted 1923

Dr Scott, who is in charge of the Greenvale Consumptive sanatorium, said yesterday that he desired to correct some impressions which might be convened by the interview with the chaplain (the Rev C.W Ratten) published on Saturday.

Dr Scott explained that though a number of patients had left, not one had been “discharged.”

The position had been explained to them.

There was but a limited supply of water, and therefore this should be conserved for those inmates who, in the interests of public health, it would be unsafe to allow to leave Greenvale, or who, if they did leave it, would have nowhere to go.

In no case, he said, had anyone been permitted to leave “who had no homes to go to,” as was stated in the interior; nor could any of those who had left possibly be a menace to others, for none had any active symptoms of the disease.

Some of them would have been discharged as cured in the ordinary course in any event.

The rest, by attending to what they had learned in regard to the preservation of their health, would be as well off in suburban or in country homes us in the sanatorium.

Dr Scott said that it was misleading to say that a patient had never had a bath since the first patients had been forced to leave.

Every patient could have a basin of clean rain water in the morning, and, by using this “judiciously, it was possible to keep the body perfectly clean.

In regard to the drinking water, Dr Scott said that he understood that the department was taking steps to have water carted to the sanatorium.

This is stating the case as well as it can possibly be stated on behalf of the Health Commission, but it will hardly satisfy the public.

The fact remains that 40 patients have left the sanatorium who would not have left had the writer not failed.

But, surely, it may, be assumed that they would not have been kept there, supposing there had been plenty of water, had there not been some good reason for doing so.

Therefore, the contention that they would be as well off now as they would have been had they remained is not convincing .

The delay in carting water requires further consideration.

Two teams, two lorries., two 400-gallon tanks, and a nine mile haul should not be an undertaking that would take months to organise.

Then, doubtless, the public would like to know how it was that the commission, when it decided to enlarge the dam which holds water for the stock, should have undertaken this work in mid-winter.

In this case the expected happened.

The dam had been emptied to permit of the additional excavations, and in the midst of the work very heavy rains fell, so that the work had to be abandoned.

Not a drop of these rains was caught though they would have more than sufficed to fill the dam.

Why has not more provision been made for storing rain water by means of galvanised iron tanks?

If storage by this means had been, say, quadrupled the situation would not have been nearly so serious as it is now.

For it is on rain water that the institution depends for cooking and for drinking water.

Provision seems to have been made for normal seasons; it should have been made for drought conditions.

Some time ago, Mr Ben Chaffey, knowing the straits that the Sanatorium was in, generously offered, through his manager, Mr McPherson, to permit water to be carted from the dam on his Sherwood estate It would be interesting to know why this most opportune offer has not been taken advantage of.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/1890841